How important is music to your poetry?
What’s interesting about this question is that I started writing poetry again around the same time I began studying piano again, so the two seem to be twinned in my mind; this has come out in my work, as well. My poetry coach/mentor is also a pianist, and she has noted several times that my poems are naturally musical and lyrical. And poetry and music are innately related/mutually beneficial: music has beats and sounds and tones and timbres and rhythms, as does poetry, especially when read aloud. So while music is beyond language, language has a music and finding it is important.
I also think that when one studies as much poetry as I have, one begins to absorb its cadences (a musical term as well) that seep into language. So while I have had no formal writing training save for one creative writing course in college, all the reading I’ve done has helped infuse the tradition of lyric poetry into my own work.
Another way I think music and poetry work together in my work is through my increasing attention to sounds and the senses. Poetry, often, can be visual—especially as we tend to encounter it on the page and screen. Yes, we can read it aloud and can hear it, but most of the time, I’d guess, we read it. Given that, I think it’s important to not only listen to poetry, but also for poets to pay attention to different senses than the visual. Lately, I have been trying to incorporate sounds into my lines, both in terms of the words themselves (e.g. assonance, alliteration, etc.) and in terms of sounds I’m portraying.
Finally, there may be a genetic component: I don’t have a musical family at all, except for my great-grandmother on my mother’s side (her grandmother Louise) who, I’m told, played piano by ear. She could hear a song or a jingle and play it, despite having no formal training. I’ve been told I have a good ear for music (by my piano teacher) and for lyrics/words/sounds (by my coach), so I’d like to think that comes from her.
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